4 ways to quantify the legal department’s impact

Measuring the value of a legal department requires the use of subjective standards that go beyond traditional profit-and-loss metrics. 

By Curtis Lu • Aug. 4, 2022

Making your first legal ops hire? Look for these 7 skills

Overall, you want to hire someone with experience in building, managing, and scaling programs at a very strategic level.

By Mary O'Carroll • Aug. 3, 2022

Using connected legal tech systems to do more with less

LawVu aims to help in-house legal teams reduce their tech stacks, boost efficiency and improve engagement with other business units. 

By Lyle Moran • Aug. 2, 2022

Using CLM technology to manage risk and strengthen compliance

ContractPodAi says pre-built contract templates make it easier for legal teams to ensure agreements comply with key legal obligations.

By Lyle Moran • Aug. 1, 2022

Operating your legal team as an internal service business

You might not have your own P&L, but acting as if you do positions in-house attorneys as a go-to resource for the organization, Ari Buchler of ZMC says.

By Robert Freedman • July 29, 2022

Leveraging the recession to optimize your legal team

Organizations facing cost constraints can be open to initiatives that better use in-house attorneys even if there’s upfront cost, general counsel and legal ops specialists say.

By Robert Freedman • July 28, 2022

Building a legal ops team? Start here

Mary O'Carroll: General counsel should make their first operations hire by the time their legal team is five-members strong and look for a strategic thinker. 

By Mary O'Carroll • July 27, 2022

Prudential's GC encourages in-house counsel to try new roles

Ann Kappler says attorneys developing a broad range of legal skills and knowledge about different parts of the business sets them up for long-term success.

By Lyle Moran • July 26, 2022

Leveraging legal ops to improve outside counsel results

To the extent law firm professionals feel they’re an extension of the in-house team, the work product stands to be better, a management specialist says.

By Robert Freedman • July 21, 2022

Legal talent platform Priori announces $15M financing round

The company connecting in-house teams with outside counsel plans to use the funding to speed its growth and enhance its technology.

By Lyle Moran • July 20, 2022

How a fintech product can help legal teams review deals

Company leaders say Claira enables in-house teams to focus on higher-order tasks rather than rote work.

By Lyle Moran • July 18, 2022

Bad-deal fear keeps in-house teams from seeking alternative fees

If billable hours go over budget, the firm gets the blame; if a novel payment arrangement leads to higher costs, the legal department looks bad.

By Sam Mellins • July 15, 2022

New DocuSign legal chief hopes to advance company’s growth

Jim Shaughnessy said he will prioritize promoting the company’s CLM products and aim to collaborate effectively with other new executives. 

By Lyle Moran • July 12, 2022

A new GC's first 100 days action plan

Lennar Title’s Suzette Torres said relationship building and project prioritization are at the top of her to-do list.

By Lyle Moran • July 11, 2022

Most legal departments are small in size, benchmarking report says

A recent report also found that larger companies have a smaller percentage of lawyers on their legal teams and a higher percentage of paralegals compared to other businesses.

By Lyle Moran • July 8, 2022

The case for bringing ediscovery in-house

Legal departments can reduce costs and risk by operating ediscovery systems internally, Casepoint officials said.

By Lyle Moran • July 6, 2022

For legal ops chief, job one is getting lawyer buy-in

Project management details must take a back seat to trust-building, says Ashley Adams of Contentful. 

By Robert Freedman • July 5, 2022

Large cities saw highest law firm rate hikes in the U.S.

The rates law firm partners in the U.S. charged clients last year rose an average of 3.4%, according to a LexisNexis CounselLink report. 

By Lyle Moran • July 5, 2022

Flurry of M&A activity helped push outside counsel rates higher

The LexisNexis CounselLink report also highlighted that the rate differential gap between the largest law firms and the next tier down grew wider than ever before.

By Lyle Moran • June 29, 2022

Start with predictable spend to change minds that legal is only a cost center

Every in-house team has matters with well-defined outlays. Make those your easy wins to show control is within your reach, a budget specialist says.   

By Robert Freedman • June 22, 2022

Enterprise employees don't view legal departments as good business partners

Inefficiency, inflexibility and slow response times were cited as the major reasons why employees hold poor views of in-house legal teams’ business friendliness. 

By Lyle Moran • June 22, 2022

More in-house departments using retainers to pay law firms

The use of a blended hourly rate is another type of alternative fee arrangement that has increased, according to a benchmark report that looks at 2022 trends in legal department operations.

By Robert Freedman • June 14, 2022

Humility, team-focus key to in-house attorney hires, CLO says

Especially for early-stage, fast-growth companies, there’s little room for me-first people, no matter how good they are at law, according to Tim Parilla of LinkSquares. 

By Robert Freedman • June 10, 2022

Going live doesn't make CLM a success, says former Microsoft legal ops chief

If people aren’t using your contract lifecycle management program, or using it the way it was intended, you’re not getting what you want out of it, says consultant Lucy Bassli.

By Robert Freedman • June 3, 2022

Downturn puts spotlight on spend, says Stripe legal ops chief

The company’s legal team is hoping to introduce more alternative fee structures to help gain more balance in outside law firm costs. 

By Robert Freedman • June 1, 2022